


Run the Banner Down

by blood bag boogie (evil_bunny_king)



Series: Pine, Cedar [1]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, adam coaxes her to unwind, and oh the longing, oh the forehead kisses, the detective has a long day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28428411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/blood%20bag%20boogie
Summary: A long night at the warehouse. Adam pays the detective a visit.--It scares him, as much as anything has scared him during his long, long years. The stir of earth, the shaken ground. The way his heart moves: a tremor that tilts him that little bit further on his axis, unbalancing and inevitable at once.
Relationships: Female Detective/Adam du Mortain
Series: Pine, Cedar [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110209
Comments: 9
Kudos: 30





	Run the Banner Down

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Shearwater - Run the Banner down.

Adam steps through the halls of the warehouse. Familiar paths cross and branch before him: to the kitchen, the games room, to the dining room - separately furnished as per Nate’s request, although he had conceded to an old oak round table in the kitchen as well.

(The irony that it was Nate himself that spent the most time at the kitchen table now, basking in the heat of the aga like a cat in the sun with a fort of books piled around him, is not lost on Adam. He would bite his tongue before he said as much, though - Nate has his managed contradictions, and of all of them, this is surely the tamest.)

This time, though, Adam is not retreating to the dining room and the wine racks Nate has so thoughtfully installed there. He stalks past the cracked door to the kitchen (where Nate is indeed ensconced with his books and his hot chocolate, humming sea shanties to himself) and the games room, where he can hear Felix and Mason playing darts or pool or some other game that allows gregarious cheating and creative swearing.

No, his feet take him to the belly of the warehouse, the lower floors, to the living quarters. Where their bedrooms are.

Where Ivy is.

(it’s still new to him: the idea, the knowledge that he can do this- he can walk those few lengths of the warehouse and she will be there. That he will be welcome. He is home with her, as he is in this place, as he is with his unit (his family), and that is a powerful, half-forgotten thing.

It scares him, as much as anything has scared him during his long, long years. The stir of earth, the shaken ground. The way his heart moves: a tremor that tilts him that little bit further on his axis, a misstep of feeling; unbalancing and inevitable at once.)

But welcome he is, as his knuckles tap against the stained wood of the door.

He’s come to check on her. He’s hardly seen her since she’d retreated from the library to her bedroom, to catch up on work, she’d said, the catch of stress in her tone belying her laughter.

That was three hours ago. It’s past midnight, now, and he can hear she’s still awake, the steady thrum of her heartbeat clear through the door.

A rustle of movement within.

“Come in,” Ivy calls eventually, and so he does. The door is quiet as he swings it carefully shut behind him.

Ivy is confined to her desk, surrounded by a strew of papers. Her dark hair is pulled into a bun that much of it has already escaped, and she hardly looks up as he approaches, bent over her work. It’s amusement now that stirs in his chest. He is not used to being ignored. 

“I’ll just be a moment more-” she says, a hand rising vaguely in his direction. “I’m just- just following a-”

“Following what, detective?” he asks as her words hang there, abandoned.

He’s by her chair now, his hand settling against the back and he grazes a knuckle lightly against her back, tracing the warm curve of her shoulder blade through her silk blouse. She shivers, arching back into his touch. It takes her a moment more to look up, but she eventually does, blinking as she focuses on him. Her jade eyes are softened by the lamplight and tired, shadow-worn.

“...a thought,” she finishes, distractedly. She blinks again, tilting back in her seat to look at him. The light is re-entering her gaze, sparked with something akin to mischief and he raises his eyebrows, his hand trailing to the back of her neck almost idly, as if he’s quite forgotten what he’s doing. He hasn’t. He likes the way her shoulders flex as he draws the back of his nails towards the base of her neck, as he settles his grip there, warm and heavy, holding.

He almost sees something else shift in her gaze, equally warm, before that mischief rules out.

“Detective?” she asks. She tips her head back until her hair falls over his wrist, cascading from its bun. “Thought we were past the formalities now, agent.”

“Ivy, then,” he says, in a play of concession and if he didn’t know her better, he’d say that she was pouting. The colour of her eyes have changed. Closer to grey, to blue, now; like gathered clouds, a low horizon.

“Giving in so easily, du Mortain?”

“I am,” he says, “because Detective Blackwood has done enough for today.” He pauses, again taking the measure of her exhaustion, the tension bunched in the muscles beneath his hand. His mouth firms. “You need sleep, Ivy.”

She holds his gaze for a moment, the tired lines gathered at the corners of her eyes pinching. She doesn’t like it but she can’t deny it, and they both know it.

Nevertheless her mouth twists, and she looks back to the desk, her pointer finger tapping against the papers. “I thought Nate was the mother hen.”

“He would not be pleased to hear you say that.” He squeezes gently before he lets his hand fall away, giving her space. 

Her shoulders bunch further, a conceded point. “No, he wouldn’t. Even so.”

Adam turns to lean back against the desk, in her line of sight, drawing her to look at him again. He holds her gaze. “You’re distracting from the point.”

He knows what her work means to her. It’s not just for her or the department, or even the agency, but for her younger sister, her junior detective - she feels she has a duty to her, one that she has borne throughout their childhoods and one that he understands, exquisitely, painfully, but still-

There is a point beyond which she will no longer be able to push.

He does not want to see her stretched to that brink.

“Am I?” comes her answer, almost petulant, this time. She only half means it. Her resolve is wavering, shivering like shaken glass.

He holds his ground. “Yes.”

They look at each other, green eye to stubborn green eye. She bites her lip, furrows her brow, a miasma of pent up frustration and tension gathering, sharpening, threatening to take form.

The stand off lasts until he takes her hand, gently, her fingers slender and chill in his own, and like that, the fury leaves her.

She gestures wordlessly at her papers with her free hand, a day’s worth of struggle and overwhelm in the motion. She shuts her eyes, squeezing them tight as she takes a controlled, unsteady breath and when he brushes his fingers against her chin it shudders out of her, capitulating, wounded.

She gentles as he traces the line of her jaw, softly, so softly, his other hand shifting to entwine her fingers with his. He firms his touch, his thumb sweeping up and along the curve of her cheek, over the soft warmth of her skin. She is so beautiful, even now, exhausted and on the verge of breaking.

“Ivy,” he says, his voice rasping in his throat, and she turns into his palm, her eyelashes feathering against her cheek.

“Adam,” she says, more breath than anything. Her hand has curled around his forearm, fingers digging in, holding on - for balance, for safety, and she anchors him as much as he does her, he thinks, as his heart moves again; a tidal shift of motion, his axis tilting that little bit more.

And it's terrifying and awe-inspiring, each time. 

After a moment he reaches back up to tuck her hair behind her ear, carefully, his fingertips just grazing the shell of it, before he pulls away again. He untangles their grip and braces his hands against the desk, fingers curled safely around its lip, fixing them there instead of- instead of anything else he might want to do, in this moment.

He knows how and what he wants. He wants to draw her closer, to hold her; he _wants_ her with an unbridled feeling that runs rampant in his thoughts and in his dreams and while it - his attachment, their connection - is no longer unwelcome, it is still _so much_. He doesn’t know the measure of how much. Better to be patient. Safer, to be patient.

She blinks her eyes back open, slowly, as if waking from a dream. Her cheeks are flushed, ever so slightly. The hint of rose settles under the skin, warm, tempting, and his gaze drops to her mouth, her parted lips. He remembers the taste of them, sweet as a welcome, as home, and the strawberry of her chapstick.

He swallows, feeling the press of the desire that’s welled in his throat, simmering and sparking in his touch, and lets it slip away.

“Ivy,” he starts, and then clears his throat; starts again. “Ivy, I would like-”

She’s watching him, quiet for once, and he can see the exhaustion that’s sinking over her, weighed in her movements. She’s so very tired. He levers himself upright and she follows, unwilling to lose him, almost knocking her knees against the desk and swaying when she finds her feet.

“You would like?” she repeats, her eyes glittering in the dim of the lamp.

And he concedes enough to let himself slip his hand into her hair, to pull her close enough to place a kiss on her brow.

“You’ve done enough,” he murmurs into her hair, soft and faintly lemon scented against his cheek. “Please, Ivy. At least rest, if you will not sleep.”

He untangles himself, not ungently, from her loose grasp. He steps back and then walks from the room, closing the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this to loosen my writing up again after a draining, exhausting month (did I project on the detective? Yes I projected on the detective-)
> 
> With Adam, I think that even in an established relationship he’d still need a little time to thaw- it has been 900 years, after all. Terrifying, to open yourself up to someone else - to need, and want someone else, with such an avidity of feeling, when you’ve been so used to being yourself, being self-contained.


End file.
